An excursion into certain areas of art, computers, philosophy, text, zombies, alchemy, metallurgy, music, food, creativity, pataphysics, politics, France where I worked as a cultural civil servant (yes, I do know that this is appalling), Berlin where I live and work for me, England where I come from, and so on... this may change.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Strange to be writing when you can't speak. I had teeth done this lunchtime, and still can't feel my lips or tongue, can't eat, drink, and especially can't speak. Quite dumb. Also, I feel a need to move my lips as I read or write, to confirm that the system works a bit. I hear "President" Bush moves his lips whilst reading. The Romans apparently did too, it was the norm.The excellent all-female dental team were muttering to themselves about numbers, and through the haze of slight pain and much terror, I realised they were talking about football non-stop. This was in Berlin, of course.I prefer "real" football, with lots of goals. None of this 1 - 0 stuff! I want to see Germany playing the Isle of Wight second team. 27 - 0, 6 own goals, piles of soiled underpants for goalposts and the referee hangs herself after the match.A team of Zombies would be oddly ineffectual, since Zombies can't cheat, they only appear to be able to. 'Pataphysics, though, tells us that this is perfectly ok: the science of imaginary solutions can be brought to bear on football as well as all else. A Google search for 'Pataphysics and football reveals 1440 hits, but I can't be bothered to look.'Pataphysics deals with singular exceptions, not general rules and induction or deduction, so there is a team of animals playing soccer inside my mouth at this very moment, proving that Donald Rumpsfeld really is a psychopath.

ps - A word to the right-wing whingers leaving their disgusting posts justifying anything Bush, Rumpsfeld et al and their killers and torturers do, all over news and other websites such as the BBC: if you don't like the traditional values shared by America and Britain of fair play, decency, humanity... why don't you just... you know, LEAVE? I'm sure you'd be happier in a place like Uzbekistan.

pps - A deeply wonderful blog whose latest post concerns the use of landmines in the art gallery, and much else of erudite stimulation : http://museumofdust.blogspot.com/

Monday, June 12, 2006

Three internees in Guantanamo, the illegal American prison camp, kill themselves. There have been many suicide attempts, many of the inmates are on psychiatric medication. In other words, as if we needed to be told, they are being literally driven mad.

The American official response is that these suicides were "an act of warfare". "They don't care about human life, others' or their own..."

It is clear (and has been admitted in some cases, and is suspected in many others) that at least one of the suicides was INNOCENT. Officially. He was going to be released in a few days. They'd got nothing on him. Nothing at all. Never had. He was 17 when arrested. Having been there years. He did not know he was to be freed, the Americans not having seen fit to tell him.

I would rather have NO feelings, as a Zombie, than the "feelings" of those officials involved. Imagine them sitting round a table, with their Cokes or coffees. Got a problem here. Won't look good... I know, we'll say it was AN ACT OF ASYMMETRIC WARFARE! RIGHHHHTTTT! (giggles).

(Commander of Joint Task Force Guantánamo, Navy Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris: "an act of asymmetric warfare"; further described by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen Graffy as "a good PR move to draw attention")

There may come a time when moderate, good people, in and out of America, start using the word "Fascist" seriously to describe some actions, words and deeds, of this American administration. I don't think it is far away. How shameful. How terribly sad and frustrating for all those Americans who abhor and detest it as much as anyone else.